For Arab citizens, Israeli Government Suffers From Split Personality
Ten years after the Or Commission was formed to investigate the deaths of 13 Arabs protesters at the hands of Israeli police, the government is taking contradictory steps toward implementing its findings.
By Ron Gerlitz
These are the words that introduced the Or Commission recommendations, published exactly ten years ago. The commission was formed to investigate the violent clashes between the police and Israeli Arabs during October 2000, the most violent between the government and Israel’s Arab citizens since the establishment of the state. The events lead to the death of 13 young Arabs at the hands of the police, as well as the death of a Jewish civilian who was killed after a rock was thrown at his car. The Or Commission stated firmly that “Israel’s Arab citizens live in a situation in which they are discriminated against as Arabs” and that “the state must work to wipe out the stain of discrimination against its Arab citizens, in its various forms and expressions.”
But ten years on, has the stain been erased? Has it faded or become smaller? Has the state even tried to erase it? Based on an ongoing monitoring of government policy towards Arab citizens, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that when it comes to implementing the commission’s recommendations, the government has taken contradictory steps, as if it suffered from split personality disorder.
The Or Commission found that the events were the result of deeply rooted factors, among them the systematic and structural discrimination against Israel’s Arab citizens. It stated unequivocally that the state has not “done enough to grant equality to its Arab citizens and do away with occurrences of discrimination and deprivation,” and recommended that one of the government’s main goals must be “achieving real equality for Arab citizens.” The commission went further, asserting that inequality could not be rectified only by affirmative action in the allocation of new budgets, adding that existing resources should be redistributed equally in cases where budget limitations did not previously permit doing so. The commission even stated, in so many words, that this form of equality must also apply to the sensitive issue of land allocation.
The statements and recommendations were impressive and important. But has anything been done?
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